Roughly 2,200 years ago, somebody hid a wooden box in a cave in the Judean Desert.  The box, which contained 15 silver coins, moldered there until this year, when it was found by archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The find was made in Muraba’at Cave, now part of the Nahal Darga Nature Reserve by the Dead Sea (also known as the Wadi Daregah). The cave famously had sheltered Jews fleeing the Romans at the end of the ill-fated Bar Kochba Revolt that began in 132 C.E. But the newly unearthed coins are evidence of people using the cave centuries earlier, at the end of the Hasmonean period, the IAA said.

“Often, ancient coins bear inscriptions and symbols that help to date them,” according to Eiten Klein of the IAA. “These did — and, lo, they predated Bar Kochba by centuries.” All were silver tetradrachma minted by Ptolemy VI, King of Egypt, and dated from 176-170 B.C.E.